M. Geoffroy de St. Hilaire has described a polydactyle

horse as having fingers separated by membranes:]: yet, when ancient authors have spoken of horses, the feet of which
of the natural series to which it belongs ; and in every instance, however great the deviation, the species to which the individual belonged has been readily recognized. — Ed.
* Aelian, de Nat. Anim. lib. xvm. cap. xvin.
t Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. vu. cap. iv.
% Seance de V Académie de Paris, 13 Août, 1807.
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bore some resemblance to the hands and feet of a man, they have been accused of imposture. The history of inanimate bodies is not less rich in singular facts, which the ancients considered as prodigies, and which the moderns long regarded as fables.
Upon Mount Erycus in Sicily, the altar of Venus was situated in the open air ;# and upon it burnt, night and day, an unextinguishable flame, without wood, coal, or cinders, and in defiance of the cold, the rain, and the dew. Bayle,f one of those philosophers who has rendered the greatest service to the human intellect, regards this as a fable. He would not have received, with more indulgence, the account which Philostratus j gives of a cavern observed by Apollonius near Paraca in India, whence continually issued a sacred flame of a leaden colour, emitting neither odour, nor smoke. Neverthe- less, nature has kindled similar fires in other places. The fires of Pietramala in Tuscany are, according to Sir Humphrey Davy, owing to an escape of carburetted hydrogen gas.|| The perpetual fires admired at the Atisch-gah (place of fire), near Bakhou, in Georgia, § are fed by the naphtha with which the soil is impregnated. These are sacred fires, and the penitent Hindoos have surrounded theirs with an enclosure of cells, similar to those raised round the fire of Mount Erycus, the temple
* Aelian, Var. Hist. lib. x. cap. l.
-{• Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, art. Egnatia, note D. + Philostrat. Vit. Apollon, lib. in. cap. in. || Journal de Pharmacie, année 18] 5, p. 520. § N. Mouraviev, Voyage dans la Turcomanie et à Khiva, p. 224 —225.
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of Venus. In Hungary, in the salt mine of Szalina, in the circle of Marmarosch,* a strong current of air, rushing from a gallery ignites spontaneously. It is carburetted hydrogen gas, similar to that employed in the present day for lighting our streets. For this purpose it has been profitably applied, and with a success which apparently will prove durable, since the gaseous effusion is no less uniform than abundant. In the province of Xen-si in China, several wells emit volumes of carburetted hydrogen, which is applied by the inhabitants to the common uses of life.f Phenomena, similar to those we have described, would at the disposal of thaumaturges, become powerful auxi- liaries to superstition. The ignorant have been led to believe, that water was metamorphosed into blood ; that the heavens rained blood, and that the snow lost its natural colour and appeared stained with blood ; and even that flour bread has offered a blood-imbued nourish- ment to man, from which severe diseases arose. These are the facts we find in ancient history, and even in some modern writings, almost of our own times.
In the spring of the year 1825, the waters of the Lake of Morat presented an appearance, in many places of being coloured with blood ; and popular attention was directed towards this strange appearance. M. de Can- dolle,| however, proved that the phenomenon was
* Le Constitutionnel, du 7 Septembre, 1826.
t Extract from the account of Vanhoorn and VanKampen, 1670. Séance de l'Académie des Sciences, 5 Décembre, 1836.
t Professor de Candolle, the most distinguished botanist of the present period. — En.
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caused by the development of myriads of those creatures, which are called Oscellatoria rubescens (purple con- ferva of Fuller), and which form the link in the chain between animal and vegetable beings.* The phenomenon occurs every spring, and the fishermen then say, the lake is in flower.f M. Ehrenberg, when sailing on the Red Sea, discovered that the colour of the water is occasioned by a similar circumstance.! It would not, therefore, be impossible, for a naturalist, were he to study the mode of reproduction of the Oscel- latoria, to convert the waters of a pond, or a portion of a river, or running stream into apparent blood.
We are acquainted with many natural causes which explain those stains observed on stones and the walls of buildings, which might easily be imagined to be caused by a shower of blood. The phenomenon of red snow, less often remarked, although as common as the other apparent blood stains, yet results from many natural causes. Naturalists have attributed it some- times to the pollen powder of a species of pine ; some-
* Revue Encyclopédique, tome xxxiii. p. 676.
f The phenomenon on the occasion referred to continued for several months. In the advanced period of the day, the lake appeared covered at a little distance from its banks with long parallel, red lines, which were driven by the wind into the small bays ; and being collected round the weeds, formed a spume of a beautiful colour, varying from greenish black to lively red. A putrid odour exhaled from the shallow places. The flesh of the pike and the perch became as red as if they had been fed on madder, and the small fish died. — Ed.
% Revue Encyclopédique, tome xxxiii. p. 783, and Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, 2nd edit, tome vi. p. 383.
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times to small insects, or minute plants, which attach themselves also to the surface of certain marbles,* and to those calcareous pebbles, which are found on the sea shore.f
* See on this subject the interesting Memoir of M. le Profes- seur Agardh, Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, vol. vi. p. 209 — 219 ; and the Mémoire de M. Turpin on the red substance, which is found on the surface of white marbles, Académie des Sciences, séance du 12 Décembre, 1836.
t The account of the red- snow, which Captain Ross observed in the Arctic Region, and the specimen of the substance which that officer brought home, excited in no ordinary degree the attention of the naturalists, botanists and chemists, of Europe, and many theories were formed to explain its nature. The most satisfactory opinion was given by Professor Agardh, in a memoir published in the twelfth volume of the Nova Acta Naturœ Curio- sorum, p. 737. The Professor first notices a shower resembling sulphur that fell near Lund, and which was found to be the farina of the fir ; and two showers of apparent blood ; more especially one which fell at Shonen in 1711, occasioned by insects ; but which the Bishop of Swedberg pronounced to be a miracu- lous intervention of the Divinity, and not a natural event. He then mentions most of the parts of Europe, where red snow has been observed ; and also the opinions of botanists respecting it ; especially that of Baron Wrangel, that it was a species of lichen, which he termed Lepraria kermesina ; but Dr. Agardh regarded it to be one of the Algœ, and named it Protococcus nivalis, or kerme- sinus. He examined it under the microscope, and found that it consists of minute, blood-red opaque particles, perfectly round and sessile : they were both aggregated, forming little clusters, and solitary. He considers that there is a great affinity between it and the infusory animals — beings which seem to be the link between the animal and the vegetable kingdom, and which pass into each other ; and for the existence of which the agency of light and heat is essential. The protococcus has never been seen except on white bodies. It has been asserted by naturalists that
78 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE.
In the environs of Padua, in 1819, the polenta pre- pared with the flour of maize appeared covered with numerous little red spots, which were soon considered, in the eyes of the superstitious, as drops of blood. The phenomenon appeared many successive days ; although pious terror sought by fasts, prayers, masses, and even exorcisms to bring it to a termination. Those feelings excited to an almost dangerous degree, were at length calmed by a naturalist,* who proved that the red spots were but the results of a mould until then unobserved.f
it is precipitated from the atmosphere ; but this opinion, has not been made out. Agardh supposes that the melting of the snow, and the vivifying power of its light contribute to the production of this plant ; but, I may remark that although these powers may call the plant into existence, when its spawn or germs are present, yet, we are still in the dark as to whence it is derived. An excellent figure and account of the plant is contained in Dr. Gre- ville's Scottish Cryptogamic Flora, vol. iv. p. 231. — Ed.
* Revue Encyclopédique, p. 144 — 5.
t Blood spots, as these were termed, were first observed during the great general plague in the sixth century, and again during the plague of the years 786 and 959. " The same spots also, in the years 1500 to 1503, threw the faithful into great consternation, because, as on the former occasions, they fancied they recognized in them the form of the cross." Crusius, a writer of that period, even gives the names of many on whose clothes crosses were visible. In the vicinity of Biberach, on the Rhine, a miller's lad, who ventured to make rude sport of those supposed markings of the cross, was seized and burned. a These spots on the last mentioned occasion, spread through Germany and France. They were principally red, but they varied in colour. They appeared on the roofs of houses ; on clothes, (whence the name
" Heoker's Epidemics of the Middle Ages, trans. 1844, p. 205.
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The grain of the bearded darnel (Lolium temulentum), mixed with wheat, gives a reddish tinge to bread baked on the ashes ; and if this food be eaten, it occasions violent giddiness. Thus, in all the examples quoted, the natural effect being satisfactorily made out, the mar- vellous disappears, and with it falls the accusation of imposture or ridiculous credulity with which ancient authors are so frequently accused.
On the surface of the hot mineral springs of Baden in Germany, and on the waters of Ischia, an island in the kingdom of Naples, the zoogène is gathered, a singular substance resembling human flesh and skin ; and which, after undergoing the process of distillation, produces the same results as animal matter. M. Gim- bernat# has seen rocks covered with this substance near the castle of Lépoména, and in the valleys of Sinigaglia and Negropont.f This affords an explanation
Lepra vestuum) ; on the veils and neck-handkerchiefs of women ; on household utensils ; and even on meat in larders. George Agricola, a naturalist, who lived at the time, recognized them as lichens, and regarded their appearance as an indication of exten- sive diseased At so late a period as 1819, a red colouring mould appeared on vegetable and animal substances, in the province of Padua, which excited superstitious apprehensions among the people. b — Ed.
* Journal de Pharmacie, 1821, p. 196.
f It is most probably an hœmatococcus, one of the Zoocarps, peculiar organized bodies variously classed by botanists and zoologists as animals or plants, owing to the difficulty of deter-
a Agricola, De Peste, 1554, lib. i. p. 45. b Vincenzo Sette, sull' Arrosimento straordinario, &c, quoted by Hecker, 1. c. p. 206, note.
80 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES CREDIBLE.
of those showers of human flesh, which held a place among the crowd of the prodigies of antiquity, and which excited an excusable dread in those who beheld in them an announcement of the decrees of fate, or threatenings of the Divinity ; and who would impute to divine intervention every rare and opportune event.*
In 1572, some time after the massacre of St Bar- tholomew, a hawthorn blossomed in the Cimetière des Innocents ;f fanaticism saw in this pretended prodigy a convincing proof of the approbation of Heaven of the destruction of the Protestants.
When the soldiers of Alexander were digging wells in the vicinity of the Oxus, they remarked that a spring flowed in the tent of the King ; as they had not at first perceived the water, they pretended it had arisen suddenly; that it was a gift of the Gods; and Alex- ander was willing they should believe it to be a miracle.j
The same wonders have been displayed in very dif- ferent times and places. In 1724, the Chinese troops pursuing in Mongolia, an army of rebels, suffered severely
mining to which division of the organic kingdom of nature they belong. — Ed.
* There can be no doubt that every event in the system of nature is under the direction of the Deity ; but this does not set aside the agency of secondary causes, which are continually operating ; and by whose influence we explain both the ordinary phenomena of nature, and rare and opportune events. — Ed.
f Thuan, Hist. lib. lii. § 10.
% Q. Curt. lib. vu. chap. x.
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from thirst. They discovered a spring near the camp, and cried out that it had issued miraculously from the ground. This favour was attributed to the spirit of the Blue Sea,* which lay in the vicinity of the spot where the miracle was observed ; and the Emperor ordered a monument to be raised to record the event.
The Emperor Isaac Comnenus being overtaken by a violent storm, took shelter under a beach tree. The noise of the thunder alarmed him ; he, therefore, changed his place ; and immediately afterwards the beach was up- rooted by the violence of the wind. The preservation of the Emperor's life passed for a miracle owing to the intercession of St. Thecla,f whose day is even now observed by the Christians ; and to whom Isaac Comne- nus dedicated a church.]:
The rain which so opportunely succoured Marcus Aurelius in the war against the Marcomans was attri- buted by the Christians to the efficacy of their prayers ; — by Marcus Aurelius to the favour of Jupiter ; — by some polytheists to an Egyptian magician ; and by others to the astrologer Julianus ; but all concurred in regarding it as a celestial prodigy.
When Thrasybulus came at the head of the exiled
* Timkowski, Voyage à Pékin, t. n. p. 277.
f Saint Thecla was a native of Isauria. She was well educated, and is renowned for her eloquence, which she is said to have received from St. Paul, by whom she was converted from Paganism; and on whom she attended in several of his apostolical journies. Butler's Lives of Saints, 8çc. p. 498. — Ed.
X Anna Comnenus, Hist, de V Empereur Alexis Comnène,\iv. ni. chap. vi.
VOL. I. G
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Athenians to deliver his country from the yoke of the thirty tyrants,* a fiery meteor illumined his path : it was regarded as a divine fire, sent by the Gods to guide him in the darkness of the night, and to conduct him by roads unknown to his enemies.
The falling of aerolites has so frequently happened, that it may concur with the moment of a combat: and such a coincidence probably gave rise to the fiction that Jupiter rained stones on the enemies of Hercules.f Were we to credit the Arabs, a similar shower crushed at the foot of the walls of Mecca, the Ethiopians, who were the profane besiegers of the sacred city.j It is also related that Basil, chief of the Bogomiles returning in the evening from the palace of the Emperor || to his cell, was assailed by a shower of stones, not any of which were thrown by a human hand : and that the pheno- menon was accompanied by a violent earthquake. The enemies of Basil deemed this phenomenon a super- natural punishment upon the heretical monk.
The inhabitants of Nantes, at the time when their
* S. Clement. Alex. Stromat. lib. i.
f This fable may also be explained by supposing it a specimen of the figurative style. The pebbles which cover the plain where the battle was fought would furnish abundant ammunition to the warriors armed with slings, who under the auspices of their national God, the Tirynthian Hercules, invaded the south of Gaul and fought the natives.
% Bruce, Travels to discover the Source of the Nile, vol. n. p. 446—447.
|| Anna Comnenus, Histoire de l'Empereur Alexis Comnene, liv. xv. chap. ix.
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country was under subjection to the arms of Julius Caesar, took refuge in the marshes, which form at some distance the river of Boulogne. Their asylum enlarged, and became a town, known under the name of Herba- tilicum. In 534, the soil on which it was built, having been undermined by water, sank into a lake, which swallowed up the town ; one part of it situated on high ground alone remained, and is at this day the village of Herbauge. Hagiographers promulgated as a miracle this disaster which is so naturally explained ; and we are told that St. Martin, who was sent by St. Felix, Bishop of Nantes to convert the inhabitants of Herbatilicum, finding them immoveable in the faith of their fathers, and in consequence of the reception he met with, departed in despair ; the town immediately was engulphed, and a lake usurped its place, presenting an enduring monument of the chastisement inflicted on unbelief.*
In the bay of Douarnanez, similar marine ruins may be observed. These, says ancient tradition, are the remains of the town of Is, which was swallowed up by the sea in the commencement of the fifth century. Gralon, King of the country, alone saved himself; and the impression made on the rock by the hoof of the horse that carried him away is still pointed out.f Inunda- tion is a local phenomenon which cannot be a matter of surprise ; other ruins on the same coast attest the
* Actes de St. Martin, Abbe' de Vertou, in the Preuves de l'His- toire de Bretagne de Dom Morice, tome i, p. 196. See also La Vie de St. Martin, Oct. 24, and La Fie de St. Filbert, August 20.
t Cambray, Voyage dans le département de Finistère, tome n. p. 221 -224.
G 2
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ravages of nature : but it has ever been, in all ages, the inclination of man to take advantage of natural disasters, and to announce them as preternatural events intended for the benefit of mortality.
The ignorance of the fact that certain phenomena are peculiar to certain localities, has caused some events to be either revered as supernatural interpositions, or rejected as impossibilities. Among such are pretended showers of nutritive substances. We are told that in 1824 and in 1828, a shower of this kind fell in a district of Persia; and so abundant was the rain, that in some places it lay five or six inches deep on the ground. The supposed fallen substance, however, was a well known species of lichen, which the cattle, and the sheep eat up with great avidity ; and which was also converted into very eatable bread.* How many natural occurrences have thus passed for miracles.
If the multitude have often regarded as prodigies some local phenomena, the periodical return of which they did not reckon upon, ignorance also, or forgetful- ness, has often obscured the knowledge of the natural facts, even to the priests themselves, who proclaimed them as prodigies. The following example affords a proof of this remark. The iElians worshipped Jupiter Apomyios (the fly catcher) ; and at the commencement of the Olympic games, a sacrifice to the God was per- formed for the banishment of all the flies. Hercules in the place, where a temple was afterwards raised to him, invoked the God Myagrusf (also a fly catcher), on which
* Séance de l'Académie des Sciences, Aug. 4, 1826.
f Myagrus, or Myodes, was an Egyptian demi-god. — Ed.
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account the story adds, the flies were never after seen in that temple.* But independent of the use of secret means, such as certain fumigations, which drive away flies, the disappearance of these insects was only a natural consequence of the profound obscurity which always reigned in heathen sanctuaries. In order to discover whether the prodigy bestowed the surname on the God, or whether the surname of the God was the origin of the pretended prodigy, let us examine where the worship of the fly-catching God commenced.
In Syria and in Phenicia the God Belzebuth or Baalzebud,f the God or lord of the flies, was wor- shipped ; and at the approach of Pluto, or Hercules the serpent, the constellation which rises in October, all the flies disappeared. But such a coincidence could only occur and be consecrated by religion in a country where the presence of the flies amounts almost to a plague ; and where the revolution of the seasons regulates their periodical return.
The inhabitants of Gyrene made sacrifices to the God Achro to be delivered from flies. J This draws us
* Solinus, cap. i. Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. x. cap. xxviii. and lib. xxix. cap. vi.
f The name of Baal-zebud may be traced in that of Bal-zub, under which the ancient Irish worshipped the sun as the God of Death ; that is the sun of the inferior signs ; the same as Serapis and Pluto, (C. Higgins on the Celtic Druids, p. 119). It is difficult now to prove a common origin between the divinities of Ireland and those of Phenicia. Baal-zebud was in Phenicia the star of the autumnal equinox, the God whose annual arrival put an end to the plague of flies.
Î Plin. Hist. Nat.
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nearer to the point we desire to arrive at. It was from the platform of Meroe, # far from the formidable Tsalt- salya, that the shepherds took flight, to await the autumnal equinox, the desired termination of his six months' reign. They must have worshipped in this conqueror of flies, the constellation of the equinox, afterwards represented by Serapis, Pluto, and the Ser- pent. In the countries where this divinity was adored as changing the face of the earth and the destinies of men, the lively impression made on those who had frequently witnessed the plague over which he triumphed, concurred to extend his worship from Cyrenaiea into Syria, among the Phenicians.
The Romans and the Greeks, perhaps, also borrowed this superstition; but it is remarkable that Greece attached itself only to African traditions. The Arcadians of Hersea joined the worship of the demi-god Myagrus, which they had acquired from Africa, to that of Minerva. Their tradition reported indeed that Minerva was born in Arcadia, but it was on the margin of the fountain Tritonides, that we are told the same wonders were
* Modern geographers have differed in fixing the locality of Meroe ; but M. Cailloux has settled the question. He describes it to be that part of Africa in the vicinity of the Nile, which is formed into a kind of peninsula by the Nile itself, not its branches Astapus and Astaboras as formerly supposed. The river bends in such a manner as nearly to insulate a space so large, that to travel round it requires many weeks, while across its neck, is only one day's journey. Its inhabitants resembled the Egyptians in their refinement and their architecture ; indeed Meroe was supposed to have been the cradle of most of the religious institutions of the Egyptians . — E d .
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displayed,* as those which assigned the lake or river Tritonis in Lybia, as having the honour of being the birth-place of Minerva. An Arcadian colony which established itself among those hills on which, at a future period Rome was built, carried there the worship of Hercules. If Numa owes to the Tyrrhians the knowledge which induced him to consecrate at Rome, under the name of Janus,f a temple to the planetary God of Meroe,| it was most probably communicated by the companions of Evander, who, long before his time, had raised an altar on the banks of the Tiber to the annual liberator of the river Astapus and Astaboras.
When the worship of this local divinity was thus propagated among a people, to whom it must have been foreign, the prodigy attributed to him arose naturally from the interpretation of his name, of the origin of which they were ignorant. Analogous inventions have at all times been numerous ; and especially when they were often fostered by the exhibition of the emblems appropriated to the name which the God bore, and regarding which the supposed prodigy furnished a plau- sible explanation.
The vulgar, for whose adoration prodigies are pre- sented, believe without reflecting on the nature of their
* Pausanias, Arcud. cap. xxvi. The Bœtians also of Alalco- menia show in their country a river Triton, on the banks of which they placed the birth of Minerva, (Pausanias, Bœot. cap. xxxiii).
f Janus was merely a symbolical representation of the year. Some of his statutes held the number 300 in one hand and 65 in the other. — Ed.
+ Lenglet, Introduction à l' Histoire, p. 19.
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belief; — the man of education submits, from habit, to the established belief; — the endeavours of the priest is to make it respected, and to increase his own influence. #
* It is curious to observe superstition holding her sway over the minds of the ignorant long after the sun of Christianity dis- pelled the shades of idolatry, and shed its benign influence upon this island. Kirk, in his Essay on Fairies, seriously informs us that these beings changed their places of abode at each quarter of the year ; " and at such revolution of time," says he, " seers, or men of the second sight, have very terrifying encounters with them, even on the high ways ; who, therefore, usually shun to travel abroad at these four seasons of the year, and thereby have made it a custom to this day among the Scottish- Irish to keep church duly every first Sunday of the quarter to sain or hallow themselves, their corne and cattell from the shots and stealth of these wandering tribes ; and many of these superstitious people will not be seen in church againe 'till the next quarter begin, as if no duty were to be learned or done by them, but all the use of worship and sermons were to save them from these arrows that fly in the dark."" The popular creed, also, at the same period, and almost onward to the present day, was burthened with the belief in omens, and auguries, whilst the common people nourished as sacred the most absurd superstitions and observances. Regi- nald Scot, who wrote a work entitled " Discoverie of Witchcraft," says, " amongst us there be manie women and effeminat men (manie papists alwaies, as by their superstition may appeare) that make great divinations upon the shedding of salt, wine, &c. ; and for the observation of dates, and horses use as great witchcraft as in anie thing. For if one chance to take a fall from a horse, either in a slipperie or in a stumbling waie, he will note the daie and hour, and count the time unlucky for a journie. Otherwise he that receiveth a mischance, will consider whether he met with a cat, or a hare, where he went first out of his doores in the morning ; or stumbled not at the threshold at his going out ; or put
■ Kirk's Essays on Funerals, p. 2, 3.
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Miners who have died from suffocation, were at one time thought to have been killed by the demons of the
not on his shirt the wrong side outwards ; or his left shoe on his right foote."a Reginald's name-sake, Sir Walter Scott, informs us that supernatural appearances are " still believed to announce death to the ancient Highland family of MacLean of Lochbuy. The spirit of an ancestor slain in battle is heard to gallop along a stony bank, and then to ride thrice around the family residence, ringing his fairy bridle, and thus intimating the approaching calamity. "b Sir Walter refers to this omen in the Lady of the Lake.
" Sounds, too, had come in midnight blast, Of charging steeds, careering fast Along Benharrow's shingly side, Where mortal horseman ne'er might ride."
The tomb-fires of the Scandinavians, the tan-we of the Welsh, were also omens announcing death ; and it was generally believed that when a freeholder was about to die, a meteor was always seen either to shoot over and vanish on his estate, or to gleam with a lurid light over the family burying ground. Mrs. Grant, in her Essays on the superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland, relates a singular instance of the belief of a learned and pious clergyman in the predictive property of these tomb-fires, well worthy of perusal.0 The apparition of the " corpse candle," canwyll corph, implicitly believed in Wales, is a light which is supposed to pass from the habitation of a person about to die, to the church-yard, precisely along the path which the funeral must afterwards proceed. It is believed to be a mark of divine bene- ficence conferred upon the Welsh, from the prayers of St. David, who, on his death bed, obtained a promise that none of his flock should die without having previous intimation of his death. The Welsh have implicit belief in the apparition ; they give the name " canwyll corph," also to the inflammable gas, fired by electricity
a Scot's Discover ie of Witchcraft, p. 203.
b Lady of the Lake, p. 106.
c Vide Grant's Essays, &c. vol. i. p. 259.
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mine ; who were infernal spirits, guardians of treasures hidden in the depths of the earth, and who destroyed all covetous men, for endeavouring to penetrate to their asy- lum. In these ancient and universal traditions we recognise the effects of exhalations and noxious gasses, which are disengaged in subterraneous places, particularly in mines. In order to preserve the miners from their deadly influence, science has investigated their nature, and by thus acquiring a control over them, has dissipated the phantoms, which were created by ignorance and terror. But could this have been attempted with success, had science been able only to point out the evil without having discovered the remedy ? Could science have dared to promulgate its beneficial discovery, when Princes, who committed their gold to the bosom of the earth, beheld in those superstitious terrors the surest safeguard of their hidden treasures : or even so long as the miners referred to the influence of the demons of the mine, not only the real dangers that surrounded them, but also attributed to them their own awkwardness, their faults, and their misconduct in their subterranean dwellings?*
To science it still belongs to denounce and to eradicate such universal errors, which may be regarded
in boggy grounds ; and which they believe indicates the death of a Welshman in some distant country. They have, also, credulity sufficient to give credence to another apparition which they call teulu, a kind of phantasmagoria representation of the funeral. — Ed.
* J. Tollins, Epist. Itiner. p. 96, 97.
"■ Meyrick's History and Antiquities of Cardiganshire, 4to. p. 123.
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as real epidemics, by which multitudes are duped, although without a deceiver. At one time it was be- lieved in two countries of Italy that the accouchement of women was always accompanied by the birth of monsters, an event which was believed so common, that these monsters were designated " brothers of the Lom- bards, or Salernitans,"* and they went so far as to believe that in the patrician families they were noble animals, such as eagles, and hawks ; and, in the plebeian families, the baser animals, such as lizards and toads. This belief gave rise to frequent accusations of sorcery, productive of atrocious condemnations ; and at that time any learned man would have shared the same fate as the victims whom he might have desired to save; if, in opposing the general extravagance of opinion, he had unveiled some ill-observed or incorrectly reported phenomenon as the origin of it : and thus exposed the deceptions inspired by folly, or interest, or the spirit of revenge.f
* Flomann Tractatus de Fascinatione, pages 622, 623, 626. Frater Lombardorum vel Salernitarum. Rabelais probably alluded to this absurd belief in the prodigies described as having preceded the birth of Pantagruel, (liv. n. chap, n.) prodigies which have always been regarded as deserving a place among those extrava- gant fictions which sometimes are destined to serve as passports to bold truths.
f In the commencement of the seventeenth century, a French priest having been, by an unlucky chance, attacked by one of the lower animals in a manner too disgusting to relate, was accused of sorcery by his own brother. On the outcry of the whole town, struck with horror, he was taken before the tribunal of justice ; and constrained by the pains of the torture to confess an
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To explain many tales of sorcery, and elucidate many features in mythology, it is only necessary to observe the deviations from the usual course of nature among tame animals, and among those in a state of confinement, and detached from the society of their fellows.
But it would have been in vain for the voice of science to have raised itself to explain a phenomenon in which enthusiasm beheld a prodigy ; especially when men who had the power of creating belief, had an interest in persuading the multitude that the prodigy was real. The priesthood would have menaced him in the name of that Divinity, whose rights he might be accused of contemning. Eresicthon, so says an ancient fable, used his axe in cutting down a wood consecrated to Ceres. Some time afterwards he was attacked by the disease named Bulimia,* — a malady which was as
imaginary crime, for which he was condemned, and suffered an ignominious death. Could a well informed man, had he then related what Aristotle had written twenty centuries before re- garding the charge, have ended the scandal, and terminated an ab- surd criminal prosecution, or prevented its abominable issue? A man, enlightened amidst a blind population, would he not have been called upon to exculpate himself as a favourer of the crime, and as an accomplice of the sorcery ? Such a result might be suspected, when we are told that the illusion was entertained even by the celebrated Aubigné, one of the most enlightened men of the time in which he lived.
* The quantity of food consumed in some of the well authen- ticated cases of this extraordinary disease, is almost incredible. Among others, Dr. Cochrane, of Liverpool, has recorded the case of a man, placed under his own personal inspection, who in one day consumed four pounds of raw cow's udder, ten pounds of raw beef, and two pounds of candles, besides five bottles of porter. The disease has appeared in persons of all ages ; and many of
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well known in the times of the ancients, as in our own. He suffered insatiable hunger, which he attempted in vain to satisfy. His wealth soon disappeared : all his resources failed ; he sank under his malady, and died of inanition : the priests of Ceres consequently triumphed ; and a fable invented by them, records that the impious Eresicthon perished miserably, the devoted victim of the vengeance of the Goddess, whose gifts are bestowed for the nourishment of the human species.*
Such were the nature of those accidents which the priests knew how to turn to advantage, when cir- cumstances threw them in their way: nor did they allow a single phenomenon of this kind to escape their investiga- tion. The Roman Pontifs, however, did not introduce the practice of inserting in registers the miracles, which were every year brought to light; they borrowed the custom from the Etruscan priests, whose sacred books are frequently quoted by Lydus :f and it is more than
them seemed to be, in every other respect, in good health. They, however, have usually soon died, and not unfrequently of apparent inanition.* The unfortunate Thessalian mentioned in the text, is said to have been driven to devour his own limbs. Ovid extends the tradition, and completely destroys its probability, by relating that the daughter of Eresicthon could transform herself into any animal she pleased; a power which she employed for her father's benefit. — Metamorp. f. xvin. — Ed.
* Modern superstition equals in many respects the ancient. Fromann {Tract, de Fascinatione, p. 6, 13) quotes instances of Bulimia, which might be regarded as examples of persons pos- sessed by a devil.
t Lydus de Ostentis.
* Medical and Physical Journal, vol. in.
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probable that this usage has existed in all the ancient temples. With whatever intention they may have been at first established, such records must, in the end, have afforded very extensive information. It is difficult to collect a series of philosophical observations, without even involuntarily drawing comparisons.
For instance, it would be interesting to discover what is reasonable or scientific in the judgment given by a priest or an augur, on the results of a miracle, or the expiatory ceremonies proscribed for displaying them. Often, without doubt, it was only meant to disturb, or to reassure the alarmed imagination : often ignorance and fear blindly obeyed a superstitious custom, however stupid or ferocious. But as Democritus informs us, the condition of the entrails of the animals sacrificed would furnish to a new colony, disembarked on an unknown shore, a probable idea of the nature of the soil and the climate on which their future welfare depended.*
The inspection of the liver of the victims, an opera- tion which afterwards served as a basis for many predictions, had originally no other object. If they found it in all victims presenting an unhealthy character, they concluded there was little salubrity, either in the waters, or the pastures. The Romans were also
* There can be no doubt that valuable information on the score of health might occasionally be obtained from such inspections ; yet animals like men become naturalized to the localities in which they have long resided, and do not suffer from their insalubrity as animals or men newly transported to them. More accurate information can be obtained from observing the description of animals, reptiles, and insects peculiar to the country, and particularly the plants indigenous to the soil. — Ed.
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regulated by similar indications, in determining the foundations of towns, and the position of fortified camps.* Such examples prove that some of the reli- gious practices of the ancients, emanated from positive science, founded on long observation ; and in these we may still discover instructive vestiges and real philosophy. We have now reason for believing that magical performances were much more useful to the priests than prodigies, since far from happening suddenly, the precise moment, the extent, and the nature of the results were entirely dependant on the will of man. The apparent miracles related by the ancients explain them- selves naturally ; their accounts of them cannot, therefore, be regarded as falsehoods : and wherefore should their recitals be doubted, when they treat of magical per- formances, which also admit of explanations not less satisfactory ? It can only be believed that the priests possessed and kept secret the knowledge necessary to operate these wonders. Let us not overlook the rule by which our belief may be regulated ; namely, the measure of favourable or of contrary probabilities. Is it likely that in every country, men whose veracity we have established on points which have been powerfully attacked, should relate so many absurd wonders, and yet have only for their object to impose upon the ignorant ? Is it not more probable that the recitals are founded on truth ; and that these wonders have been affected by means acquired from the study of the Occult Sciences, which were shut
* Vitruvius de Archit. lib. i. cap. iv. Cicer. de Dioni. lib. i. cap. lvii.
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up in their temples ? And does not this likelihood approach to certainty ; if we admit, that careful obser- vation and a patient comparison of all prodigies and extraordinary facts, would endow the priests with a con- siderable fund of practical knowledge : — and, that from these researches magic may have originated ?
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